April is National Poetry Month and Nanaimo is joining in with free events at city libraries.
All across Canada, communities will spend the month celebrating poets, libraries and 25 years of the Public Lending Right Commission, which ensures that writers are paid for free access to their work in public libraries.
On Thursday (April 7), join local poets Kim Goldberg, David Fraser and Leanne McIntosh at Wellington Library, 7-8 p.m., for Three Poets & A Dinner Plate – a poetry reading.
On Sunday (April 10), head on down to the Harbourfront Library at 1 p.m. for the official unveiling of the latest Poem Gallery, featuring the work of more than three dozen local poets. Many of those poets will be on hand to read their selection featured in the Poem Gallery.
The Poem Gallery is organized by Goldberg and Harbourfront head librarian Abbas Saffari.
“I would like us to start thinking of poetry as the skin of the city,” says Goldberg, who created Nanaimo’s first Poem Gallery in early 2008 in a vacant downtown storefront.
The Harbourfront Library Poem Gallery has been going since 2008 and showcases the work of poets living within the Vancouver Island Regional Library system.
The display is changed annually and is located on the library’s large picture window fronting onto the Diana Krall Plaza.